Venom and Vanity
by soheil solitarius
Summary: SPOILERS for EWatLO : He is gone and she remains, with only the wrathful tremors of the earth to remind her of the past over and over and over again.


{ A/N: these two seem like they were semi-friends, if that makes any sense. it's just kind of hard to make real friends when you're immortal. or geldoblame. ;_; }

_Remembering is only a new form of suffering._  
— Charles Baudelaire

_#01 speak_  
Once upon a time, his voice wasn't always filled with contempt.

_#02 touch_  
Fingertips alight on the back of his neck, cool and soft and barely even there (_is he imagining this?_); he stiffens.

_#03 memory_  
There is a strange, sad kind of reminiscence in her eyes when she looks at him sometimes, and it just makes him want to strike something.

_#04 vanilla_  
Her soft, lily-white skin makes him look down at his own in disgust; he wants to tear away this wrinkled, leathery shroud and emerge again, naked and pale and beautiful as he once was - but the only thing beneath his skin to free is blood and sinew, and he doubts how attractive such a display would be.

_#05 chocolate_  
Inky and dark, her hair is the same haunting color as his eyes.

_#06 ways & means_  
"I do whatever it takes to achieve my goals," he tells her with a scoff, "and you may think me _tyrannical_ or _insensitive,_ or whatever you and Ladekhan have been tittering about lately - but that is because you, as a leader, are simply unambitious."

_#07 belief  
__Staying nice and fair,_ she muses as scenes of fire and gore and felled gods and sandstorms dance across the backs of her eyelids, _perhaps was not quite as simple as I had assumed._

_#08 linger_  
Just for an instant, her fingers ghost gently, insolently over his face, his hair, his neck, and his stomach twists angrily; when did he give her permission to touch him?

_#09 illuminance_  
A peculiarly poignant aura surrounds her like a shield of sunlight, and as he approaches, he can feel it flaring between them.

_#10 ornament_  
She is covered from head to toe in bursting, beautiful, crimson blossoms, and even as he stands before her in a mighty carapace of gold, he feels more like a peasant boy than an emperor.

_#11 coup de foudre_  
She is striking, a goddess in her own right as she stands with the sunlight - his sunlight - lighting her up from behind, and he inclines his head slowly to her as she boards her ship to depart, smiling her impartial, not-quite smile.

_#12 archway  
_Every door in her palace in a open one, warm and welcoming; it makes him sick.

_#13 fate_  
He once - and only once - had wept brokenly into her silken kimono and she once had rubbed his back in slow, soothing circles, telling him over and over again that every event in this universe happens for a reason - even betrayal, even death.

_#14 pulse_  
Suddenly she cannot feel him anymore, and she knows something has happened that she has not foreseen.

_#15 envelop_  
Celestial Blossoms billow across the balcony, and as they stand there together, watching them dance, his hand comes to rest lightly over hers and her lips turn upward in the very faintest of smiles.

_#16 cold_  
Desert nights are frigid and empty, with nothing but the whistling, angry wind to quell his lonesomeness with the mournful screams it carries.

_#17 need_  
Neglect had become so familiar to him in his naive, innocuous youth that being occasionally without company years later made his heart ache in the most bizarre way.

_#18 drunk_  
Power had changed him, and she thinks it might be possible to sober him and wake him again into the world he once lived in - but who in the world would be so foolish as to take up such a task?

_#19 mask_  
"I don't think you're quite as omniscient as you like to present yourself, Your Grace," he growls, and she smiles back at him in the most breathtakingly blank way that he cannot think of anything further to say.

_#20 rose_  
With lips as red as wild jungle roses, she smiles coyly at him and whispers, "A lighter shade might look nicer on you, my dear Emperor."

_#21 two  
_Truth be told, she had never expected him to survive those last two decades_ - _but then again, no one had ever expected her to survive those last two centuries, now had they?

_#22 fresh  
_She thinks the most acceptable way to go about telling him of how she stays so frighteningly vivacious is to not tell him at all.

_#23 bribe_  
He is laughably easy to hurt, so she is careful to tiptoe tenderly around his sore spots - for a madman with a broken heart is the most dangerous kind of all.

_#24 error_  
She had turned a blind eye to him, and that was when he had finally snapped.

_#25 appetite_  
One would think that a man his size would have a considerable appetite, but Corellia has never once seen him eat.

_#26 refrain_  
History repeats itself over the years in an ever listless, maddening refrain that no one but she will ever remember the lyrics to.

_#27 family_  
She hesitates to call what she feels for him "love" - it is more of a strange kind of piteous, saddening familiarity.

_#28 grieve_  
She has watched him wallow in unbelievable sorrow for twenty years.

_#29 vapor_  
Winding and meandering around the palace of Komo Mai is a burbling, impossibly clear river, and his lungs greedily take in its pure, cool, foreign air.

_#30 tea_  
"Why anyone would ever spoil perfectly good tea with _clouds,_" he growls incredulously as he dumps his cup most inconspicuously into a suit of armor, "is beyond me."

_#31 medicine_  
"I laughed just the other day," he tells her incredulously when she informs him of a recent medical discovery, "when the dolt that I call my Minister of Finances fell down a flight of stairs."

_#32 moth_  
She is one of the only people in the world that got the chance to see his wings before they withered.

_#33 perfect_  
As much as he enjoys her company, sometimes he just wants to see her impossibly lovely face smashed into bloody, bruising ruins.

_#34 rope_  
Bound in her own damning disregard, she feels herself drowning in darkness as the wicked god tears its way into the world.

_#35 wind_  
She cannot help but laugh when the breeze blows unassumingly through the room and ruins his meticulously styled hair.

_#36 crossroads_  
When the Fairy Guide first reached out a hand to the Emperor he jerked back ever so slightly, as if he, still so young and firm and strong, feared being broken by such a petite, porcelain creature as she.

_#37 summer_  
She rarely if ever indulges in visits to Alfard not only out of fear of seeming partial to a wartorn empire, but also because she cannot bear the harshness of its climate on her brittle skin.

_#38 candy_  
Sweetness can only fool someone for so long.

_#39 photograph_  
Looking though old mementos of the past, Corellia feels a sudden, foreign surge of woe come over her when she comes across an old, faded picture of a forgotten lunatic and his adoring disciple.

_#40 spoon_  
She nearly chokes on her tea when she looks up and sees him staring her formidably down with a spoon dangling majestically from his nose.

_#41 forest_  
Howls and warbles from the jungle that send him scrambling in the middle of the night serve as tender, simpering lullabies to her.

_#42 mirror_  
They are sitting together, talking quietly about recent developments, the same tired pleasantries as always, when she notices not for the first time that evening that he is not looking at her while he speaks, but instead desperately trying to catch a glimpse of his reflection in the ornate windows behind her.

_#43 smoke_  
When he sweeps into her palace the aroma of smoke and heavy perfumes invigorates her, making her skin tingle and her chest tighten ever so slightly, and she lets out a tiny, breathless sigh.

_#44 shine_  
He shudders as her eyes, like shimmering emeralds, bore unrelentingly into his own.

_#45 balloon_  
He has grown corpulent, burgeoning outward like a sickening caricature of himself, and she has pointedly decided not to say a word.

_#46 vine_  
A bundle of silk threads weaves itself over her otherwise plain kimono in a winding vine, and once again he finds his own extravagance somehow seeming vague and nondescript.

_#47 butterfly_  
He swats irritatedly at one of the beautiful jungle butterflies fluttering playfully about his head until she shoots him an uncharacteristically severe look.

_#48 gloves_  
The gauntlets he wears, with their sharp, ruinous talons, compensate nicely for his ragged, bloody fingernails.

_#49 venom_  
His every movement is accentuated by a kind of overbearing acrimony; she likes to think that her own brand of venom is just a bit more powerful because of its subtlety.

_#50 remain__  
_He is gone and she remains, with only the wrathful tremors of the earth to remind her of the past over and over and over again.


End file.
